


Just a Breath Away

by Justme_iguess



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, M/M, Sad Ending, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 06:22:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12788673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Justme_iguess/pseuds/Justme_iguess
Summary: Peter Nureyev has dreams.(Sorry this has no tags. I wrote this on short notice)





	Just a Breath Away

Peter Nureyev has dreams.

 

Before he met Juno they were seldom about the same things. They were of the galaxies, his long fingers stretching beyond the sky and beyond his troubles. He was a man without gravity as he fled from place to place.

 

Then his toes touched the thin surface of mars, and he looked into the eyes of Juno Steel.

 

This man is filled with snarky oneliners and loneliness. He is constantly wrapped between layers of stupid blankets to shield himself from the angry reality of the world. Contradictions and regret gather inside those blankets as he faces it.

 

He is beautiful. That is the first thing Peter Nureyev notices. With his body half out the window, and a smirk evident on his scared face. The Martian air is in his hair, and he looks at Peter with striking blue eyes.

 

The Martian sky is much different from earth's sky. It is clouded with pollution and lazersmoke. Earth, after most humans have touched the stars, however has a beautiful clear sky with the white streaks of a paintbrush looming overhead. That's how Peter would describe Juno's eyes. Larger than one could fathom, the feeling that you could get trapped in them if you touched it.

 

Now his dreams are about clear blue skies even when he is on planets light years away from both Juno and earth.

 

He entangles the warm feeling of Juno's hands with the cold of Peter's. He can feel the breath of a lost goddess his neck. Peter can almost smell the entrapment of a detective far far away. The way his name feels on his lips, he remembers it well. He sounded it out when they first met, and breathed it into his neck under the dim light of a hotel room. His dreams are all regretful and much too enormous.

 

His dreams are ones where Juno has his head laying on his chest, angling so that he can see Peter. As he untangles his fingers slowly, the last electric feeling of him lingering on his skin.

 

Now?

 

Peter Nureyev, with much effort, still dreams. He leaves himself the luxury of idiotic touching in them. He pretends that it isn't unhealthy.

 

He pretends that he will get over it, when he can still feel Juno's smile against his heartbeat a million stars away.

 

There are lips that shakily whisper to himself when he wakes. " _I_ ," he says through grit teeth and a sick feeling in his throat. " _I am not just my heartbreak, and as long as I know that, Juno Steel can never break me_."

 

He is already broken. His heart has crumbled, has already been struck by the footsteps of an almost lover walking away.

 

There is work to be done, and he drowns himself in it. _Quite literally,_ he thinks, as he sinks to the bottom of the pond. He has no will left inside of him to swim back up. He looks up to the thin veil of the surface, thinking about the client of his. Something inside of him sinks lower than his own body as he finally hits the cold murky bottom.

 

_I could die here._ He thinks, _so simple that it hurts, so easy that it is tempting._

 

He watches as bubbles come from his clothing. Lifts his arm so that the rest can leave his sleeve. He lets air spill away from his mouth and nose. Vacant of any oxygen, he thinks about death once more.

 

When someone pulls him out, and gets him an ambulance, he wakes up in a hospital. He is coughing up water and a small amount of blood. Reflexes grab handfuls of air.

 

_Death is not poetic. Suicide is not a pretty story._ He starts crying, and the nurse is holding him. _I wasn't trying to make a story,_ _ **I was trying to die. Let me die.**_

 

Through his sobs he lets out his frustrations of Juno. So much pain. It spills from his lips, and he doesn't remember the last time he cried like this. Pulling gasps into his throat, and choking on tears. He grabs the pillow behind him and screams.

 

Anguish and hurt.

 

Suicidal and frustrated.

 

When he tires himself out, he slowly falls asleep. Before he does so, he asks the nurse a favor. His voice is smaller than before. "Stay?"

 

It may not be the right person, and it may be silly, but he needs someone else in the room with him.

 

"I have to." the nurse says, smiling tenderly at him. He sits on the bed. "You're on the watchlist."

 

Yes, a suicide attempt often brings that.

 

When he sleeps, he dreams that he and Juno share chaste kisses under the dim moonlight of a pond.

 

He dreams that he and Juno are two souls made of stars. The tips of their fingers are barely touching, and Peter would be okay with keeping it that way forever. Until the stars of his body flutter out. It hurts with discomfort as he tries to reach closer, but Juno looks up at him with his blue, _blue_ eyes.

 

He pulls his arm away as a simple gesture. They no longer touch.

 

The galaxies piled inside of Peter Nureyev collapse.


End file.
